The 2014 Mid-Atlantic ACF Regionals will take place at the University of Virginia Harris Hall at VCU on Sunday, 2/23/14. I am unable to announce a field cap just yet, as I won't be able to have confirmed room reservations until early January. We have reached our cap of 14 teams. Teams should register by filling out this form for ACF. I'd also appreciate an email at sea2fj@virginia.edu, especially if you are registering staffers, but the ACF form is necessary to be officially registered.

Packet Submission:
Every team with at least one person on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament prior to September 1, 2012 is required to submit a packet in order to play in Regionals. Please note that, like last year, this requirement also applies to eligible high school teams. Further information can be found at the ACF Packet Submission Guidelines.

The submission schedule for this tournament is: (note that these are Saturdays, not Sundays)
December 21, 2013: -$50
January 4, 2014: -$25 (-$50 for optional packets)
January 18, 2014: no penalty (-$25 for optional packets)
February 1, 2014: +$25
February 8, 2014: +$50
After that: +$10 for each additional day you're late. Teams that are required to submit a packet and do not won't be allowed to play.

Please submit your packet to acfregionals2014@gmail.com; the actual email with attached packet should include the phrase "[name of school + A/B/etc. if applicable) PACKET" in the subject line. In order to meet any particular deadline, your packet must be in our inbox by 11:59 pm PST on the stated day.

Packet Penalties: Be sure to fully read the information contained in the Packet Guidelines. Any cases of incorrect formatting, plagiarism, or prohibited question types will result in hefty fees. The editors also reserve the right to send back any egregious cases to be fixed by the team in question, so be sure to do it right the first time.

Please submit all questions/comments/etc. regarding this event to acfregionals2014@gmail.com, or post them in the thread. Running packet list (with deadlines/penalties) will appear below as soon as packets begin to come in.

Distribution:

The distribution for this tournament varies slightly from the required 24/24 distribution on the ACF website. As you can see below, geography and current events have been consolidated into 1/1 and pop culture has been granted its own 1/1.

I have just been informed that we are no longer allowed to use Cabell before 4 PM on Sundays despite that not being an issue last semester. I've asked if them if there's a different building we can use on Sunday, but we may end up having to either move to Saturday (and unfortunately screw over the handful of people going to VHSL States) or find another place to host the tournament (which may be difficult given that our Western Ablemarle friends are attending Texas Invitational). Sorry, everyone; I wasn't expecting them to change their policy without telling anyone.

The rooms people have confirmed that they are useless and have changed their policies so that no spaces can be used before 4 PM on Sundays. I'm getting in touch with some high school coaches, as apparently there is also a hs tournament in Maryland I didn't know about on 2/22.

The wonderful people at Virginia Tech have graciously offered their campus as a backup location. For many registered teams that's a much farther trip, so we will continue investigating the use of a local high school to keep the tournament in the Cville area. Should the HS option fail, this tournament will take place down at VT. One way or another it will not be cancelled and will take place on Sunday, 2/23. I'll send an email out to all teams explaining the situation once it becomes a little clearer (Western Albemarle says I should hear from them by tomorrow night on whether it would be possible to host there).

Ok, so, we cannot use Western Albemarle on such short notice, unfortunately. Our options are now VT or VCU, who were able to get us 6 rooms starting at 10 AM on Sunday. I'm going to email the registered teams seeing which option will work best; I suspect VCU is closer for most people, but that also involves a hard cap of 13 teams (we currently have 10 or 11, so I don't that's a huge issue this late in the game but maybe it is). Expect an email from me tonight and then an update here and by email when we have a consensus.

I'm hoping this works for NCSSM and Johns Hopkins, but having heard from everyone else, we're gonna go ahead with the VCU move and cap the field at 13. This uses every available room; I'll be TDing on a couch in the hallway. I've also confirmed with ACF that any team who would've received a travel discount at UVA will still receive one regardless of whether VCU is in discount range for them.

The Laughing Cavalier wrote:I'm hoping this works for NCSSM and Johns Hopkins, but having heard from everyone else, we're gonna go ahead with the VCU move and cap the field at 13. This uses every available room; I'll be TDing on a couch in the hallway. I've also confirmed with ACF that any team who would've received a travel discount at UVA will still receive one regardless of whether VCU is in discount range for them.

Cody is confident enough that we can use a 7th room for the second half of the day for me to raise the cap to 14. I know UMD A and St. Luke's Penny Savings Bank are in the process of filling out the ACF form, which would put us at that cap. Assuming the field stays at 14, we'll run two brackets of 7 into a top bracket of 8 and a bottom bracket of 6. The top bracket will play crossover matches, and the bottom bracket will play a full RR because crossover there wouldn't provide the ACF minimum number of games. This leaves enough packets for TB and finals.

Registration will start at 9:30 AM in Harris Hall 2117 (we don't technically have rooms until 10). I would like round 1 to start promptly at 10 AM. I'm going to want to get through as many of the prelim rounds as possible before lunch, so eating breakfast is recommended. All teams will get a logistics email from me later today.